Irreparable
by drawnintoyourflame
Summary: Howard Stark neglected his son because he was too focused on finding Captain America. Though Tony is fully aware of this, Steve is completely oblivious. That is, until he finds Tony drinking over this whole situation and expressing his every thought on the subject.


"Tony?" Steve called out, scanning each room for the billionaire. He had been absent for over an hour, and the Avengers had decided that it was high time someone went looking him. Steve brought a tray of food with him, knowing that if the inventor was working in his lab, nothing in the world could convince him to come out.

Finally, he arrived at the door to his room. "Open the doors, please."

"I am sorry, sir," came the AI's reply, "but Mr. Stark has forbidden anyone from entering."

"I brought dinner for Tony. If you don't let me in, he'll starve himself again."

A few moments passed before JARVIS responded, "Very well."

The door slid open and Steve entered, carefully setting the tray to the side. He scanned the room and found Tony next to the counter, collapsed in a drunken mess and surrounded by shattered bottles of alcohol.

"Tony?" the blonde called out tentatively and inched closer, wary of provoking the obviously intoxicated male. "Tony," he repeated when the other male showed no sign of registering his words, instead reaching over to grab a half-emptied bottle.

"Stark, _no_," the super soldier said, bending down to seize the aforementioned bottle.

Tony elicited some kind of distressed response, blindly grabbing at the air in front of him in an attempt to regain the confiscated bottle. "Why did you…" He stood up as quickly as a thoroughly inebriated man could, stumbling clumsily until he found the edge of the counter as an anchor to steady himself. As partially clouded brown eyes met bright blue ones, he hissed, "_Steve_." His voice was slurred, but the distasteful way in which he addressed the blonde was still slightly unsettling.

Steve lost his voice for a few moments at the unexpected bitterness directed at him. "I, uh." He collected himself and said as firmly as he could manage, "Tony, it's time to stop drinking."

The billionaire's eyes lowered, his eyebrows furrowing. "Just because you're the so-called _captain_, doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do."

Steve was caught off guard yet again at the way Tony continued to indignantly speak to him. He had thought that their relationship had improved quite a bit since their first encounter, but clearly they still had underlying issues. Or, at least Tony did. "I'm just bringing you dinner. This has nothing to do with—"

"Just because," the billionaire continued as if the super soldier had spoken nothing, "you were Howard's _favorite_, doesn't give you the right to tell _me_ what to do."

How did this have anything to do with Tony's father? "What are you _talking_ about?"

"Don't act all innocent, pretty boy," he snapped.

Steve frowned. Now that was completely uncalled for. "Stark, you need to stop drinking. Look at you—you're babbling nonsense." His words came out more harshly than he intended them, but he needed to get the point across that he was in no mood to put up with Tony's "jokes".

Tony snapped straight up, grabbing the collar of Steve's shirt and eyeing him dangerously. "Don't you dare," he growled, "pretend for a _moment_ that all of this isn't your fault."

Steve stared at him in confusion. Tony was making no sense at all, though Steve could partially attribute that to the alcohol. "What is _my_ fault?"

"That my own father _hated_ me!" he exploded, tears forming in his eyes as he roughly shoved Steve to the ground.

It took him a moment, but when he finally comprehended Tony's words, Steve visibly winced, not so much from the stinging sensation in his hands as glass shards tore through his skin, but at Tony's words. He knew that Stark had a rough childhood and an especially bad relationship with his father, but he had never even considered the fact that he could have been the ultimate cause of Tony's pain and misery.

"It's your fault—" He had to pause to swallow as his words choked up, taking the time to deliver a punch to the side of Steve's face. "It's your fault that I'm—that I'm this way! My father neglected me because he…" Another punch. "He cared too much about _you_! Because I was n-never good enough to make up for the loss of you!"

Steve took the punches, too paralyzed to react. Every insult Tony shouted at him was like a brick to the face.

After a few minutes, Tony stopped, bloodied fists clenched at his sides as he moved off of Steve, burying his face in his hands and sobbing like Steve had never seen before. "I'll…never…forgive…you…"

Steve, too shocked to do anything else, scrambled away, tears of his own pooling under his eyes at realizing just how much he had hurt the other male without even realizing it. He couldn't dismiss this as Tony saying ridiculous things given that he was in a drunken haze, because the more Steve thought about it, the more he understood that every word out of Tony's mouth had been true.


End file.
